Thoughts on Body-Centric Interactions, inspired by Black Mirror
Over the holiday period I (finally) binge watched Black Mirror, all three seasons of it. Since its first season the show has certainly generated a lot discussion on the where our technology could be heading, the morality and the consequences from how we handle technology.
On the show I observed many examples of body-centric interaction. The characters would use their bodies to interact with the screens — Swipe one way with one’s arm to delete or sort a message; slide up on one’s phone to pass the screen onto the AR implant in one’s eyes.
With the advancements of technology and introduction of new media and platforms, we can’t help but to think about how it would affect the domain of experience design.
Can we think of “out of the screen” solutions?
Body-centric interaction will only become increasing popular. Already we can shake our iPhones to cancel typing, we have seen devices with motion sensory input such as Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Kinect plus many more. For now, it is already interesting for us to start thinking about “out of the touchscreen” solutions — How can we incorporate our body during our interaction with the purpose of improving an experience? Is there any existing interaction that we have, that would feel more natural to use our body instead of a button or slider, for example?
Chicken or Egg situation of “natural interactions”
When designing experiences, we instinctively place a lot of importance on our users. We want them to feel that it’s almost second-nature or a smooth learning experience from the get-go. As we move onto more body-centric interactions, it’s only logical we use the same principles.
It might seem natural if we can just cover our ears to mute the music, but the rest could possibly be a minefield of “what’s natural, anyway?” Should our original physical interactions with objects come first and adapt technology back to how our body moves, or by doing so we risk breaking away from our habit of button tapping and screen tapping, creating unfamiliarity in the process, even though such habit is what we created after years of founding ourselves adapting to technology? More than often the answer would vary depending on the media, the experience we’re creating and what we’re trying to achieve.
Semiotics and Cultural implications
As designers we understand how semiotics and interaction design go hand-in-hand, we have psychologists working on conversational AIs, and in the future we may even see ourselves involved more and more with cultural experts, would someone have to be told that in some countries, we can’t use a chin flick to send a file to someone over a video chat?
I think that’s something that inspires us to be global minded, culturally aware designers, designing not for “user”, but “people”. We aspire to do work that enrich other people’s lives, and hopefully as we learn about them, it enriches ours.
